


Character Portraits - Boston Legal

by Lempo Soi (Lemposoi)



Category: Boston Legal
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Drabble Sequence, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Feminist Themes, Fourth Wall, Gen, POV Female Character, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Present Tense, Queer Themes, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemposoi/pseuds/Lempo%20Soi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles, each focused on a specific Boston Legal character. They're meant to function as quick character portraits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Character Portraits - Boston Legal

**Author's Note:**

> I queer both Lori and Brad. Other than that it's canon-compliant (and frankly I think queering those two is entirely canon-compliant too). I think I also get a little political here. There's a lot in Boston Legal that needs retconning.
> 
> Rated for both violence and sexuality.
> 
> This may be added to.

**Formative Years** \- Alan Shore

So Alan gets up, knees dripping mud, and the pain explodes on his back and he's down again, and he can't get up because the pain's got him like a blanket wrapped tight. God help him he doesn't know what he'll do if Lucas really does what he says he will but he can't get up--

"Little faggot." Lucas's braces rattle in his mouth. Another kick connects with Alan's side and he crumbles into himself like a startled centipede, a worm--

Alan Shore stares at the witness straight in the eye, not a flicker of emotion behind his pale eyes.

*

**Locks** \- Denny Crane

Denny Crane has got to be bigger than life. What does he have if he isn't? What's a man if he won't at least try to be a legend?

That's why they have locks on bathroom doors, goddammit. Man's got to be a legend. It's not a legend that's puffing on the toilet seat trying to remember how to breathe. Legends don't die of heart attacks, and certainly not in the goddamn men's room. They aren't afraid. Not even of the inevitable, the last wink. If a man is, that's his own business.

That's what they've got goddamn locks for.

*

**Ringmaster** \- Carl Sack

  
Note: He's a privileged ass.

If someone had told Carl a few years ago that this would be his life, he would have called them crazy. He somehow found himself engaged to a ballbuster, and not only representing but working with nutcases, crossdressers and dwarfs who amazingly, in defiance of the law itself, won all their cases.

Carl considered himself a man of common sense. If everybody just got with the program you wouldn't have to bother with all this PC nonsense, and half their cases would go out the window.

So why was he actually enjoying himself more than he had in thirty years?

*

**Whose Wish Are We Fulfilling Here?** \- Lori Colton

It's not easy staying in the closet, even kinda-sorta, when you work with some of the sexiest women on the planet. It escapes Lori how any woman can keep her seat dry with Tara around, and if Lori's girl-boner for Shirley got any bigger she'd need gender-reassignment surgery. And, really? The better she gets to know the men around here, the closer she gets to shrugging off the last vestiges of bisexuality and going full-on dyke.

So where the hell is this Alan Shore business coming from?

It's almost like they're on TV, and he's the star of the show.

*

**Coping Mechanism My Ass** \- Clarice Bell

That Claire Simms can talk circles around Clarence but she's not fooling Clarice for one moment. The bitch thinks Clarice is just a goddamn _costume_? Just because one skinny white girl wiggles her hips at Clarence, suddenly Clarice isn't a real person anymore? Fuck that. Fuck her.

Clarence tells her to calm down, think things through, and make room for Claire. For his sake she tries to. The bitch is making Clarence more assertive, at least. That's something. So Clarice sits back and waits. They'll implode in the end, she knows. Not even Clarence can be told who to be.

*

**Deers in the Headlights** \- Shirley Schmidt

A successful woman in the 70s had to put up with a certain amount of shit. Shirley Schmidt had just always been very specific about which shit, and on which occasions. Boys – men are all boys – hooting at her in her little black dress, or her bikini, she just laughed at, and made them laugh too, and they loved her and didn't mind so much when she beat them fair and square in the courtroom. She was one of the lads.

Women these days come to the office with wide eyes and no idea what men are holding back on.

*

**Privilege** \- Brad Chase

Brad knows that, as a straight white man, he's at the top of the social food chain. It might not be right, but he's not going to spend his life apologizing for what he is, either. Instead he works damn hard to earn that privilege, whether anyone asks him to or not, and whether or not anyone notices. He's sacrificed his time at the gym, in law school, in learning to like women. He was ready to give his life for his country. He deserves to be cherished by women, respected by peers, admired by associates. Goddammit, he deserves it.

*

**Fat Chance** \- Jerry Espenson

Katie doesn't like the wooden cigarette, Jerry knows, but sometimes he needs it. Sometimes he puts it between his teeth and has a chat with the mirror, only when she's out, just to sort things out in his mind. The cigarette guy isn't always right, but he'll always hash it out.

"...Never going to fit in. Look at you. Ugly motherfucker too. You know what? You don't have to. _They_ need to accommodate _you_, goddammit. It's about time you show them they owe you respect, after all you've done."

Jerry takes the cigarette out of his mouth with a sigh.

*

**Pat Benatar Was Right** \- Denise Bauer

Denise loved a good fight.

There were all sorts of fights. She ripped into Garrett without pity because Garrett was insolent and had to learn to respect her authority. Alan she learned to avoid, because he played dirty. She made her bed a battlefield, with Coho and with Brad, who kept trying to pull her into his little world of mommy, daddy and the star-spangled banner. Every day she fought to retain her boundaries, and day by day Brad's attacks lost potency.

It was one way to be happy; their way.

For her daughter's sake, she wishes it'll be enough.

*

**Tools, People ** \- Tara Wilson

Tara's been a lot of things to a lot of people. She's made good use of her sleepy eyes and smoky voice to distract, persuade and unsettle. What terrors she's been through she cried out in the privacy of her own home, behind locked doors, fingers tangled in messy hair, face twisted beyond recognition. Nobody else needs to know about that. Nobody needs her to be this weak human thing.

Sorrows pass. She's not made for grief; she's made for fun, for wisdom, and for pleasure.

Sometimes she forgets it's her own fun, her own pleasure, but never for long.

*

**Exes** \- Sally Heep

'Androgy-woman.' Sally really shouldn't be surprised to hear that, not in these offices. First she's too much of a woman, then suddenly she's not enough of a woman? Whatever. She's moved beyond that. If Crane, Poole and Schmidt taught her anything, it's that it doesn't matter whether or not other people like you. Results matter. Justice matters. Being popular? That stuff is for high school.

There's a kind of a fury in the way she fucks both Alan Shore and Brad Chase, like she's fucking her old job, taking in all the old lessons, this time on her own terms.

*

**Alice's Mirror** \- Paul Lewiston

Paul feels like he's living on the other side of Alice's mirror, where right is wrong and responsible actions are evil. It's not enough that his daughter swears black is white to get him off her back and let her destroy herself, he can't even go to work in the company he helped build, the company he keeps running, without being drawn into the merry-go-round of self-serving bullshit, his colleagues running after their desires as if they've never even heard of forethought.

He tries to be their rock, but they mock him for it.

He tries to be a rock.


End file.
